Biden and Law Enforcement

JOE SCARBOROUGH: As horrific as all of those murders have been, nothing has jarred Americans like what happened last Friday. It just hasn’t. And Americans aren’t going to forget this. They are not going to forget this and they’re expecting action. And, you worry, again, if Republicans and Democrats can’t come to a decision on, basically, rounding errors over ten years, how are they going to address the bigger issues?

MARK HALPERIN: Well, we don’t really know how the fiscal cliff is going to play out and therefore how it’s going to interact with this but I’ll tell you; Vice President Biden was not chosen for the task to head this task force, he was not chosen casually or by accident. He has such a long history with these issues, including working with law enforcement. That is the piece of this that really hasn’t been in the fore so far. We’ve talked about the national reaction, the President’s reaction, some reaction in the media. If law enforcement groups are marshaled by Joe Biden, as they were marshaled by him when he was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I think that could make a huge difference in pressuring, not all Republicans, but some Republicans to work on a common agenda with the President. And there’s no doubt that’s what he wants. He doesn’t want this to be done in a partisan way. Joe Biden’s the guy who can do that.

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MARK HALPERIN: And, again, if Joe Biden can build a coalition that includes not just modern Democrats and liberal Democrats, but more centrist Democrats as well as business leaders can be parts of this, law enforcement for sure, and to get some Republicans on board. If you look at the right-wing echo chamber right now in media, Internet, talk radio, it’s all about the normal partisanship and the normal looking to pick little holes in the arguments for some sort of action. If the Vice President and the President build some sort of broad coalition that 90-10 thing will be a reality, including in the House of Representatives, which is where it’s going to come down to because I think you could pass a pretty big package through the Senate. The question is, what can they do in the House?